A short political observation

[womzilla]

It is fairly obvious that a totalitarian government is going to be, inevitably, extremely corrupt.

It's not quite as obvious that a corrupt government is going to tend inevitably towards totalitarianism.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

And in fact, corrupt governments can noodle along for quite a long time without going totalitarian. After all, being totalitarian means being willing to give up convenience to pursue a Big Dream.

Dictatorships and Double Standards

[(Anonymous)]

Now that we're an empire and we can make our own reality, surely it's time for Jeane Kirkpatrick to return with a new treatise on dictatorships and double standards, stressing the difference between totalitarian governments (which we all oppose) and authoritarian governments (which are bad, yes, but less bad than the totalitarian ones, and which we can nudge into being beacons of democracy in our fight against the dark Satanic forces of ______ {fill in blank}.

I recently finished Jeff Greenfield's *People's Choice,* which deals with a muddled election and its aftermath. Several times in it, we read "to err is Truman," always with the reminder that in less than a decade the historians ranked the Man from Missouri with the Near Great Presidents, and that his status would grow even higher. (Who did the First Bush quote at the end of a nomination speech in 1992, wasn't it? Right...) Bush's 34% approval rating is a landslide compared to Truman at his lowest of 23%, which sets me to pondering future scenarios:

1) We realize that Bush was a man of true vision, deserving a place with the Near Great Presidents, as Truman does (Donald Rumsfeld will win a Pulitzer for his memoir, *Present at the Re-Creation,* dedicated to "Ambitious Secretaries, Past and Present")

2) We echo B.B. French's view that whoever takes office cannot be a poorer cuss than the one we have at present (French said that about Pierce, not knowing what would come with Buchanan. I find it odd that in my previous studies of the Presidency that the "Failure" category usually held only Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding; now, we seem to have a "Worst President Ever" group which contains Pierce, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson and never seems to mention Grant and Harding at all)

3) We realize that Philip Caputo and his journalist friends were correct, and that the final indignity is that there is no final indignity.

"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

Salaam from the Sparrow.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

It's certainly going to seem that way from the outside. I suspect that it's a different justification, to the people involved, to protect economic interests (ie steal the people's money) than it is to wield unchecked power without accountability (ie be able to kill who you want).